Admin introduces new layer of security: lanyards
Freshman Hannah Kuerbitz receives her ID and lanyard at the freshman pep rally.
I forgot it at home.
It’s on my kitchen counter.
My dog ate it.
I left it in my car.
Excuses formerly used for forgetting homework, now used for forgetting an ID.
Starting this year, everyone on campus is required to wear a student ID at all times to verify that they are student or faculty. At first, this announcement caused an uproar among students, largely because of confusion over the disciplinary actions.
The policy for forgetting an ID, however, has the same format as the HERO passes. The first two result in warnings and the third incident a detention.
An extension of security measures was first proposed by school resource officer David Attaway who approached principal Robert Frasca at the end of last year.
Attaway was concerned administration would not be able to identify if people on campus were students. When Frasca taught in Osceola County, all students were required to wear their IDs and when he was the assistant principal at Lake Mary, an incident happened with a student who did not go to Lake Mary injured another student. These incidents were part of the reason Frasca made it a priority to improve security at Hagerty.
“We can hope to be able to identify who’s supposed to be here and who’s not,” Frasca said.
Frasca brought his concerns to Seminole County School Board, who had been considering policies like these. Frasca volunteered Hagerty to pilot the program; making Hagerty the only high school in the county that currently requires students to wear IDs. If the policies are successful at Hagerty, the board hopes to expand them to all high schools and eventually middle schools.
Assistant Principal Douglas Miller was placed in charge of managing the new policies.
“We talked about doing it last year and we were going to do it regardless [of School Board decision],” Miller said.
Frasca and Miller admit that the IDs are not going to solve all of the problems, but emphasize that it is another layer of security that we can use to protect the students, faculty and staff.
“We lock classroom doors, that’s a layer, we have cameras… that’s a layer of security, we have security guards, that’s another… all these layers make it more difficult for something bad to happen,” Miller said.
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